State cuts off Paradise's water supply

PARADISE &GT;&GT; The Paradise Irrigation District's rights to draw water from Paradise Lake or Magalia reservoir are hanging in the balance today.

District General Manager George Barber recently told the board that the State Water Resources Control Board curtailed the district's post-1914 water rights effective immediately.

However, a meeting Tuesday in Sacramento yielded no final word on if the district's pre-1914 water rights would be curtailed, according to Bruce Ross, district director for Assemblyman Brian Dahle.

Ross, in a tweet to The Post Tuesday night, said the water board would be discussing the issue more today.

What's concerning, Barber told the PID board, was that there is no end date to the curtailment. If the curtailment continue into the rainy season, the district will not be able to keep any water it collects from the storm, he said.

The hearing would also give the state board's staff the authority to levy penalties for non-compliance, including a $1,000 a day fine for violating the curtailment, a $500 fine for violating emergency regulations and a $10,000 a day fine for ignoring a cease and desist order.

The curtailment could result in further water reductions for PID customers. The district is already under a 20 percent voluntary reduction. That could go up to 30 percent or even 50 percent mandatory reduction, which was what the district was looking at in January, before the ridge received a couple of wet storms.

"All the (reductions) that were on the table before are still on the table," Barber said.

PID attorney Dustin Cooper explained that the post-1914 curtailment is not uncommon. Water rights are "first in time, first in right," he said.

In times of drought, rights are curtailed in reverse order of priority — those with the most recent rights get curtailed first.

But there is a problem with curtailing pre-1914 rights, primarily that there is no determined order of priority.

As such, the water board proposes to use the "emergency rule making" and "wasteful and unreasonable use" process to curtail pre-1914 rights.

"The process in and of itself is objectionable," he said, noting it has a potential to significantly impact the 2015 water supply.